Despite End of World fear mongering, Embassy move not likely
President Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric came to an abrupt halt this past week on many issues including one that Arab activists who have been asleep at the wheel for the past eight years have now grasped as an electrical charge for their protests, screams and continued dysfunction. Trump vowed he would move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to occupied Jerusalem on his first day in office. But that hasn’t happened and many wonder if it will. It casts Trump in a new light, one which could encourage intelligent Arab activist leaders to use to rise up above the stupidity that has been our leadership for the past decade
By Ray Hanania
The official policy of the United States has been that it will relocate the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to occupied Jerusalem. That policy was defined in legislation adopted in 1995, although three presidents since, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, have all approved delays in implementing the order.
The embassy move has been a political hot potato in every election with every candidate for office telling voters — mainly Jewish voters — that moving the embassy is one of their priorities.
Candidate Donald J. Trump, whom the media brushed off as unlikely to win the presidency — no impossible to win — made it a part of his foundation platform.
But, on his first day in office, instead of moving the U.S. Embassy, Trump’s spokespeople have emphasized that the issue will not be rushed.
That means political reality has set in.
Jerusalem. Photo courtesy of Ray Hanania
What is the benefits and downside of the proposal to move the embassy for the Arab World and the Palestinian people.
The downside is that the pro-move rhetoric has emboldened the already extremist leadership in Israel. Israel’s fanatics have used wildly irresponsible American election campaign rhetoric as justification for their own wildly irresponsible actions that seek to absorb as much land as possible for Jews while pushing non-Jews into Apartheid-like buntastans, a policy that has been ongoing since Israeli extremists murdered Israel’s God Father of Peace, Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, the same year the Jerusalem Embassy legislation was approved by the US Congress.
The upside is that the embassy move has forced the failed leadership of the Arab World and the failed leadership of Arab and Palestinian activists to face the reality that they must reorganize and become effective.
Yousef Hanna Hanania, died on April 21, 1926 when people at the Jerusalem Quarry refused to help him because of the feared religious strife that plagued Palestine. Photo courtesy of Ray Hanania
Palestine continues to be occupied and the Two-State solution is near death mainly because of the failed opposition and the obvious dysfunction of pro-Palestinian activists who have embraced extremist rhetoric and hatred as a foundation for the annual and worthless conferences, gatherings, absence of any real effective public relations campaigns, and empty ineffective war cries.
But these activists would prefer to have conflict and extreme pro-Israel rhetoric from American politicians because it suits their agenda.
When President Trump talks about moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to occupied Jerusalem, he is helping the ineffective, worthless Arab World leaders and pathetically incompetent pro-Palestinian American activists distract their followers from their own failure and instead make the issue the unlikely stupidity of the American government.
The Arab World leaders and the pro-Palestinian activists are playing a shell game in which they know that they are powerless, and they blame all of their own failures not on themselves — the essence of true leadership is accountability and truth — but rather on others.
Christian religious presence imposes itself in Jerusalem despite pressures from all sides. Photo courtesy of Ray Hanania
It’s the shell game of shell games, played to the extreme by the Arab World and the pro-Palestinian activists who are much responsible for the suffering of Palestinians and the failure of peace as is the violence by Israel against innocent civilians not just in the Gaza Strip but throughout occupied Palestine.
The benefit of moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Occupied Jerusalem is obvious to anyone with a brain or intelligence, or who doesn’t think with their hatred, their anger or their worthless emotions: the embassy move will create a Tsunami of reaction from the Arab people who have been misled into believing that their leadership works.
The embassy move will create an earthquake of protest from the Arab Street as Jerusalem symbolizes not only the heart of true Christianity but also the heart of Islam. Without Jerusalem, there is no Islam. If the U.S. can move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Occupied Jerusalem without any issues, then the Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock can both be destroyed without even a whimper of opposition from the so-called guardians of Islam and Christianity and the protectors of human rights, civil rights and Palestinian justice.
But Palestinians don’t need the worthless and failed leadership of the Arab World or the pro-Palestinian activist failures. What they need is to recognize that failure. And the embassy move more than any other act would be as clear a signal as any that unless they stand up and protest, then they might as well just start calling themselves “Yellow People,” the term used to describe Arab immigrants from the Middle East and Greater Syria by the racist U.S. Government at the turn of the Century.
Either the Arab and Palestinian Street stands up and does something, a new Intifidah that goes beyond Palestine and redefines the term “Arab Spring,” or they go back to sleep and continue to see Palestine, freedom, human rights as impossible dreams.
Israel does not respond to peace. It exploits peace. What Israel does respond to is protest and violence. When there is no violence, Israel doesn’t seek to make peace but instead exploits that calm to steal more land, deny more rights, and violate the fundamental principles of the Rule of Law. That’s the true face of Israel today, a country that is more extreme than any of it’s Arab World neighbors.
Israel is doing inside occupied Palestine what ISIS is trying to do in the war torn “Middle East.”
And talk of peace has failed to stop Israel’s destructive and violent actions.
Go ahead. Move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Occupied Jerusalem. Because as pathetic as leadership as the Arab World and the loser pro-Palestinian activists might be, I still believe in the power of the Arab Street and the Palestinian Street to rise up and grasp for justice. To protest and demand their rights, which they may one day do.
The Arab people have been placed in a coma fueled by the pathetic and utter failure of the Arab World and the pro-Palestinian activists. They need to awaken from that coma. The U.S. Embassy move might just be an AED Defibrillator shock that is needed — no required — to jump start a new “Arab Spring Intifadah.”
(Ray Hanania is an award winning political columnist, feature writer and author. He covered Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992. Permission is granted to republish column in its entirety with full attribution. Email him at rghanania@gmail.com with comments. Hanania writes on Middle East issues for TheArabDailyNews.com and on mainstream issues for TheDailyHookah.com.)
Ray Hanania is an award winning political and humor columnist who analyzes American and Middle East politics, and life in general. He is an author of several books.
Hanania covered Chicago Politics and Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992 at the Daily Southtown and the Chicago Sun-Times. He began writing in 1975 publishing The Middle Eastern Voice newspaper in Chicago (1975-1977). He later published “The National Arab American Times” newspaper (2004-2007).
Hanania writes weekly columns on Middle East and American Arab issues as Special US Correspondent for the Arab News ArabNews.com, at TheArabDailyNews.com, and at SuburbanChicagoland.com. He has published weekly columns in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, YNetNews.com, Newsday, the Orlando Sentinel, Houston Chronical, and Arlington Heights Daily Herald.
Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media. In 2009, Hanania received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the recipient of the MT Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award. He was honored for his writing skills with two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In 1990, Hanania was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times editors for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
His writings have also been honored by two national Awards from ADC for his writing, and from the National Arab American Journalists Association.
Hanania is the US Special Correspondent for the Arab News Newspaper, covering Middle East and Arab American issues. He writes for the Southwest News newspaper group writing on mainstream American issues.
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